


you kill, you speak in tongues

by NeverNooitNiet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Daddy Issues, F/M, Gen, Sam Winchester-centric, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29340168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverNooitNiet/pseuds/NeverNooitNiet
Summary: Your mind is not your own. The future steals it, sometimes, a splitting pain behind your eyes and a throbbing at your temples. Your blood is not your own. Someone made you dirty at six months old. Your body is not your own. It was built for someone else.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester, Ruby/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	you kill, you speak in tongues

So. Your dad’s worst fear is that you’ll turn into a monster. Your worst fear is that you’ll turn into your dad. 

So, you’ve spent your whole life fighting with your dad. Even when it’s just you and Jess and your textbooks and you know he’s half the country away, his voice rumbles through your head. You have screaming arguments with him in the shower, in the comfortable silence of your mind. 

So your dad wanted to kill you. So he’s dead, and you aren’t, and you know damn well your brother won’t do it. 

Does that mean you win?

You spend a lot of your childhood alone. You lie on narrow beds in backwater motel rooms and stare up at off-white, cracked ceilings and look at nothing at all. 

You spend a lot of time in your head. There’s not much else to do. You think about what could be happening, worst-case scenarios. That’s one of dad’s lessons, considering your outcomes. 

You picture dad dead a lot. Ripped to shreds, heart clawed out, pale and bloody on the floor. You consider what would happen if he was gone. You think things wouldn’t change too much. Maybe they’d be better, just you and Dean. Maybe you wouldn’t have to move around so much. 

You never picture Dean dead. Dean always kills the monsters and he always comes home. 

By the time dad finally dies, you’re too fucked up for it to change anything. You stumble on like he’s pushing you, that rough hand pressing heavy at the place on your back where there will one day be a small, deep scar. He forces you forwards. 

Dad chooses death on his own terms and dad dies to save Dean. Both of these things piss you off. 

It’s a good death. It’s not heroic— you lose the gun, the demon, any chance at revenge. But it saves Dean. 

It’s a _father’s_ death. The irony of it pulls your face into a rictus smile. 

It’s a death that pisses you off because it makes you want to redeem him, martyr him, tell yourself he wasn’t such a bad father after all, and that’s more than he deserves. 

You prefer anger to regret. It tastes better. 

Dad’s death saves Dean, and yours damns him. One year. Your heart counts down the minutes. Your death is a stupid fucking waste, on your knees in the dirt because you couldn’t do the clever thing and finish the job. Better to have the heavy weight of a gun in your hand, recoil anchoring you to the moment, than to feel a knife slide cold and sharp into your back. 

Anger feels better, but you think it’s just a mask.

You think about dad, and death, and Dean. Round and round they go. 

Dean’s going to die and dad had a better death than you. 

You should have killed Dad yourself. _There’s_ a scenario you’ve pictured often. Fists and teeth and bloody knuckles. His blood on your tongue. You would have done it, too. Given it your best shot, anyway, acceptance letter crumpled in one torn fist as you stood over the corpse, if Dean hadn’t been there to stop you. 

Dean’s always there. 

(Dean always kills the monsters, and he always comes home.)

Dean won’t be there much longer. 

You wonder if dad ever pictured killing you. How he’d do it. The colt, clinically effective, or something more personal? You’ve never been touchy, this family. The closest thing to intimacy you give each other is violence. Pain is a kind of closeness too. 

Maybe dad should have killed you. There would have been vindication in it, in proving your worst suspicions right. Instead you die on your knees in the dirt. 

It’s a stupid fucking way to die. 

You don’t know how to want things. You’ve never been allowed the privilege of wanting, so you reach for what the television tells you Normal People yearn for. You are not a Normal Person, but you like dressing up as one. There is freedom in banality. 

You want the things dad doesn’t, mostly. Define yourself in opposition to him, fill out the negative space. You’re fairly apathetic to law, but the corporate cleanliness of it is the polar opposite of what dad wants for you, so now you read criminal law textbooks in your spare time and fill out college applications when no-one’s watching. 

And then you get accepted and dad finds out and you’re screaming at him for all that you’re worth and you’re outside, alone, with your duffel on your shoulder and the whole wide world at your feet. You get the bus to California. And then you are a student. A certified Normal Person. You live on pot noodles and caffeine and you go to lectures and suddenly you’ve got friends, proper, real friends who you won’t have to leave in three weeks. And then you’ve got Jess. 

Jess starts out as another move in your desperate bid to be normal, you’ll admit. The all-American college girlfriend. But she’s kind and clever and funny and she’s got a nice laugh and she wants to be a doctor, someday, and now you have something to lose. She tells you about her family and you tell her about yours, minus a few details, and you like the person you can be with her. You kiss in the library and you run your hands through her hair. You think you understand wanting, now. 

Jess has the same birthday as Dean and she dies the same day as your mother. She burns on the ceiling and you dreamed it before it happened. 

Jess is the first person you lose. You don’t remember mom, can’t want someone you never knew. But you want Jess. Her absence is a physical thing, a hole in your chest, and it _hurts_. You miss her laugh. You’re terrified of forgetting the tone of her voice, of her becoming like your mother, a vague, gnawing void without any memory attached to it. An absence, instead of a loss. 

You want to smell her hair so badly. You wish you had one of her t-shirts, anything, something you could hold and feel and remember her by. It all burned. Everything burns. 

You’ve never wanted Dean. You’ve never had to, he’s always been there, within reach. 

(Dean always comes back.)

You miss him. 

Is that the same thing? 

Dean dies. Torn into bloody pieces by hellhounds in some poor family’s living room. You stare down at the body and think that they’ll never be able to get the blood out the carpet and a hysterical giggle claws its way out your throat. Your brother’s body stinks of piss and blood and those dogs fucked him up good, he’s damn well in pieces, and you’re the one who drags the corpse into the backseat of the car, and you’re the one who buries it.

You rank Dean’s death above yours but below dad’s. Dad died for a better cause and he didn’t piss himself. So. Then again, dad didn’t get torn to pieces by hellhounds, so maybe it’s unfair to judge Dean on that front. You let that fantasy distract you while you fill in the grave. 

There is dirt under your nails but it’s Dean’s dirt from Dean’s grave and you can’t bring yourself to wash it out. You drink yourself half to death. 

You are the last Winchester standing.

Does that mean you win?

You are alone. You’ve been alone for a lot of your life. You like being alone, run away to be alone on multiple occasions. It’s different now. 

That’s the thing, really. You don’t want much, you just want _choice_. You don’t hate hunting. You’re good at it, you help people, the adrenaline high is unbeatable. You hate that you were forced into it, that this was your great revenge-fuelled family tragedy of a destiny. It’s all that’s expected of you, so you dig in your heels and fuck off to college. 

If anyone had asked you, had given you options, you might have chosen differently. But they didn’t, and you’re an obstinate bastard, when you want to be. 

You are alone, and you might be a monster. There’s blood in your mouth. Always blood in your mouth, now. 

Now you understand want. You’re on intimate terms with need. Need stares back at you in the bathroom mirror, pale and clammy. 

Dean would _not_ approve. But Dean got himself killed, so he doesn’t get a say anymore. Besides, dad definitely wouldn’t approve— you reckon you’re decently into Kill Sammy territory, now—and a large part of you still wants to do the whole rebel thing. Not that there’s anyone left to rebel against. Last Winchester standing, and all. 

It’s stupid. Worse, it’s desperate. Like if you do enough things to piss them off, they’ll come back from the grave to give you hell for it. 

You are dad’s negative. You want the things he does not. Dad is dead. Dean is dead. You are a bad son but a better brother. You don’t know who you are when you’re by yourself. 

Ruby comes back, and you can smell her blood from across the room, and you are not alone. Or less alone. 

Jess was safe, and nice, and normal. Ruby is none of those things. You want her all the more for it. 

You know who to be when she’s around. Her blood is in your mouth, hot and salty-sweet. 

You are powerful. You are, for once in your goddamn life, in control. Anger coils on your tongue, and it tastes like blood. 

And then Dean’s back. 

(Dean always comes home.)

You know who to be around Dean, and he knows who to be around you. Little brother, big brother. But the roles don’t quite fit anymore, or maybe they fit too well. 

You tried to break out of them, before. You tried to be the protector, to save Dean for once. To get him out of the deal, to bring him back. None of this worked out well for you. 

You slink back into being Sammy and you sit in the passenger seat. There are forty-four years, an expert’s education in torture, and a demon blood addiction between you. You slouch lower. Little brother. You have never felt smaller. 

It was an angel that brought Dean back. Not you. You have always been quietly, unobtrusively faithful, because there had to be more meaning to the world than John Winchester gave it. The angels think you’re a freak, a monster, treat your life as negligible. You take this in your stride, or try to. 

There will be blood in your mouth, later. There will be Ruby under you and anger in your lungs and power in your veins. Control, hot and heavy. 

So maybe you are a monster after all. Nothing good ever came of trying to deny it. 

Maybe Dean should have killed you. 

(Dean always kills the monsters.)

Maybe he still should. He definitely should have let you stay dead. On your knees, in the dirt. 

You wonder if he’s ever thought about it, killing you. How he’d do it. If he’d use all his Hell knowledge, now.

You’ve never thought about killing Dean, because you never think about Dean dead. Not even when he is. 

(Dean always comes home.)

Angels, see? You _told_ him there were angels. 

The angels think you’re an abomination. Maybe that stings more than you’re letting on, and maybe the only way to dull the hurt is to go to Ruby and prove them right. 

If Dean still gets to have faith in dad, after everything, you figure you get to have faith in God. You pray to Him with bloodstained teeth. 

Your mind is not your own. The future steals it, sometimes, a splitting pain behind your eyes and a throbbing at your temples. Your blood is not your own. Someone made you dirty at six months old. Your body is not your own. It was built for someone else.

So you let The Devil out. So he stalks through your dreams and wears Jess’ face and sparks up that old hurt in your chest. So Ruby betrayed you and the thing is you don’t even know what it is that she violated. What there was left of you to take. So Ruby is dead, and you know for a fact, now, that your brother has thought about killing you.

(Dean always kills the monsters.)

You don’t quite dare to pray anymore. You’re too self-conscious for it, too cringingly self-aware of all the reasons why you do not deserve forgiveness, salvation. You’re afraid of Who or What might hear you. 

You fear that Someone Else might answer. 

So you’ve ended the world, and nobody will look you in the eye anymore. 

So this is being alone. 

At least when your brother was dead, he loved you. 

Maybe he’ll love you again when you are the dead one. 

There is a hollow in your bones that wasn’t there before. A hungry emptiness. There is space for Someone Else. 

You seem to sink deeper into yourself. Your eyes sit too far forward, what they see too far away. You are not yourself— you are the current puppet master. Nothing fits right anymore. You try, reluctantly, desperately, to be the good little brother. You are too big and too small for it all at once. It chafes. 

The silences in the car have a strained quality to them that they didn’t before. There’s a humming tension in the air. The Devil stalks through your dreams, and sometimes he wears your face. 

You turn up the static in your head and try to drown it all out.

Anger is all you taste, these days. It curls bitter and bloody on your tongue. You know it is poison. You spit it out, but it always worms its way back in. 

You say you’ll die. The Devil says he’ll bring you back. You decide to thoroughly test this hypothesis. It reminds you of the science experiments you used to do at school; you wonder if you should draw a little square results table. 

He brings you back every time. He leaves no marks. Only ruined motel bathrooms. 

So now your death is not your own, either. 

Eternity stretches ahead of you, bleak and ugly. You roll the word _yes_ idly around your head. You don’t think anyone would have enough surprise in them to be disappointed in you: only flat resignation. The role of fuck-up fits you more comfortably than brother, son ever have. 

But it’s what’s expected of you. By the angels, by destiny, by the father who wanted you dead. So you dig in your heels. You won’t do it. Or you won’t do it yet. 

And when the world burns around you? And when everyone you’ve ever loved, ever known, ever brushed past in a supermarket, dies bloody? And when it’s just you and The Devil in your head?

Oblivion would be kinder. The absolution of ignorance. 

There is only one road to oblivion for you, and if you take it, you will not be worthy of it. 

The world will still burn, if you are not there to see it. You deserve to watch: it will be your fault, after all. You do not get an easy way out. 

You deserve worse than that. Penance. 

You wish Dean would kill you. It wouldn’t take, anyway, and maybe you’d feel better for it. Let suffering wash you clean. 

(Dean always kills the monsters.)

Are you a monster, or is that an excuse? Blame the blood in your veins for the blood on your hands, in your mouth. Try to ignore the lingering fear that maybe it’s just you. That this would always have been you. The fuck-up, the failure, the freak. 

You look up at an off-white motel ceiling, and do your level best not to conjure Jess onto it. 

You do not think dad would be proud of who you are now, either. It’s cold comfort. 

So. You could lock The Devil inside yourself, lock yourself inside a box. 

Salvation and damnation in one fell swoop.

Nobody else really trusts you’ll be able to do it, and you can’t say you blame them. They know there is no other option. They know you’re going to say yes, sometime. You figure you might as well make it mean something, redeem yourself ever so slightly in their memories. 

So maybe this way you can still be a martyr, can still be good, in that way that dead people are. 

So maybe you think this way you might be able to seize that oblivion for yourself without feeling quite so guilty about it. 

So you say your goodbyes, and then you say yes. 

It’s frighteningly simple, in the end. Three little letters that trip off your tongue, sibilant and soft. For a second, a split second, there is triumph in it. 

And then The Devil sweeps through you, achingly bright and numbingly cold. And you lose your precarious grip on yourself and go tumbling deep into the dark. You reach for anger, bloody comfort, something to hold on to. The steady promise of revenge. The Devil gives an icy smile and twists it out of your hands, sends it spilling in all the wrong directions. It’s only accelerant for his fire. Why would you have control of this, of all things?

You have never thought about killing Dean, even when you’ve hated him, even when everything in you wanted to hurt him. You never think about Dean dead, even when he is, and you are both on far too intimate terms with death, these days. And now your brother’s face breaks under your hands in a jarring crack of bone. Now his blood glistens on your hands, catches the cold morning sun. You cannot move your mouth, your eyes, your hands. Your face has never smiled in this way before, sharklike, hungry. 

You are going to kill your brother. Oh, God—

All the anger’s gone out of you. It drips down your brother’s face in streaks of red. In its place is the eerie emptiness of fear, desperation, want. You teeter on the edge. Then you think you might as well drag The Devil down with you. 

This is what you have that The Devil does not: this ugly maelstrom of self-loathing and loss and love. You do not have your anger. You do not have control. 

But you have your battered brother, on his knees, telling you it’s okay.

(Dean always comes home.)

The words come out bloody and hoarse, but when have you had intimacy any other way? 

You do not have control. But then you never do. You’re used to it. The Devil, on the other hand…

You let the nothingness in you spill oil-black across your insides. 

The Devil is ice. He freezes you into position. But you look at your brother’s broken face, take a match to your oil-slick innards. It ignites all too easily. You melt— _burn_ — him out. And drenched in fear, shame, your body is yours again. 

So you jump. And so you fall. You and The Devil screaming inside your head. 

Does that mean you win?

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! title is from twice your size by declan mckenna xx


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